Astroturfing Today

Sydney Meckler- sm003614@ohio.ediu


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S. Greenberg

In today’s day and age, Astroturfing is a harm to society. While most of society tends to care towards agencies that are dedicated towards causes that generate awareness to social causes around the world it is all too easy for people to become involved with causes that are not what the general public think they are.


With the easy accessibility that is available to those who are willing to look for it, Astroturfing tends to lead the public into wayward causes.


Astroturfing, in addition to the issue of fake accounts and bots, have aided in the cause to the spread of misinformation. This is a common issue today. In previous posts that contained information on these issues, while mobile devices have spread in commonality, these issues still remain prevalent.


Astroturfing is described by Merriam-Webster as an “organized activity that is intended to create a false impression of a widespread, spontaneously arising, grassroots movement in support of or in opposition to something (such as a political policy) but that is in reality imitated and controlled by a concealed group or organization (such as a corporation).




In this blogger’s opinion, corporations, companies, and firms should not be permitted to create these sub-organizations for personal gain. It is in the disinterest of the public, as well as contributes to the spread of misinformation.


With today’s political climate, it is all too easy to discredit journalistic stories is all too easy with the term “fake news.” According to Statista,  most fake news is accounted for poor journalism that is attributed to factual mistakes which accounts for 42% of respondents who have personally come across these types of fake news.


The next percentage attributes to stories where facts are twisted push an agenda that attributed towards a fake agendas at 39%. Headlines that look like news but turn out to be adverts also make up a percentage of 34% of respondents.



Through companies that create these separate organizations only attribute to misleading the public and create the issue of fake news or the spread of misinformation.


This can be seen simply through the titles of the organizations that they create that misrepresent the public. Through these organizations, companies hope that customers will take action through their separate companies. This is, quite simply, a way for companies to create organizations that represent an organic cause through dishonest journalism.


Through these, as well as other companies who hope to do the same, create an outlet for the public to declare public outrage in hopes to make changes that will benefit their causes through dishonest reporting.


By disallowing companies to create these faux organizations, we could create a baseline for the public to attribute true facts to true organizations that have just causes.


We, the public, need to source information that maintains integrity.

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